I guess the real test is the sunday when its more about that reliability @tophercheese21. For now, I am happy to settle for seemingly 3-4 teams with cars that could be more or less in the mix pace wise

@jcost Horner just showed he isn’t man enough to live with the responsibility, thankfully for them pushing Renault actually meant that they have bettered their turbo in time for the deadline and now everything can go forward from that point. Considering everything RedBull look just as good aero and chassis wise as in Melbourne 2013 but they must hope they have a perennial problem as they did last season.

Renault’s problems were to due to their turbo, Renault said the energy side was very good, but obviously with these engines everything goes past the turbo, so when it goes bad everything goes bad. On the positive side after you mend the turbo everything else comes to the fore and I wouldn’t be surprised to see that the Renault engine is already where Renault wants it to be beyond the concept there’s plenty of software mapping to do, meaning that they have employed thousands of people to work 24/7 on the mapping to get the best output from their units.

According to Vettel earlier this week, the interiors of the car have been reworked while the outside hasn’t been compromised.
I don’t know at which point one starts talking about a B-spec car but with the outer lines, crash structure, tub etc the same, i wouldn’t call it B-spec.

Remember, rumors are being started very fast in F1 and they spread like fire. The B-spec thing was a rumor.

I was pleasently surprised by their free practice perfomance. It still appears Mercedes have a commanding pace advantage over the rest of the field – in the region of half a second – but Red Bull are by far the most competitive Renault team on the basis of the first two practice sessions.

The Toro Rosso on that note looks an absolutely horrible car to control under braking: clearly a lot of work is needed to improve that facet of the car. Lotus seemed to continue their miserable winter with an unreliable and not particularly fast car (with noticeable stability issues), and Caterham had a complete failure of a day. Which is very surprising, as they appeared to have the most reliable Renault car in pre-season testing.

But perhaps one of the more surprising observations was the Williams seemingly lacking an element of stability. I imagine they were merely running higher fuel loads, but it is McLaren that appears to me to be the team closest in pursuit of Mercedes.

And weirdly, Ferrari may have a better qualifying car than a race car. That can’t stand them in good stead, for their drivers are far more renowned for their racing than qualifying perfomances.

I knew this was all scripted… “Oh the endless and sleepless nights just to arrive in form and battle against “superior” machinery… The glory of overcoming troubles is within reach”
It just reads as a novel.
In the end ” having fought a rough winter, having sorted a rough season, SV and RBR rose to the ocasion like the proverbial phoenix. Who can stop them?”

Seeing the Red Bulls perform so well was a surprise, and a good one at that. Their reliability, after what we’ve witnessed in pre-season testing, is nothing short of miraculous. It seems that Herr Helmut-Head (Marko)’s programmer army has indeed wrought positive changes. I just hope those changes are going back to Renault and thence to the other Renault-powered teams. Daniel Ricciardo also surprised me with how well he performed. I hadn’t really rated him in the past but the Red Bull/Toro Rosso spotters must have seen the talent. On the strength of FP2 he seems to warrant a place alongside Vettel, for a year at least and hopefully more.